


Say You'll Remember Me

by HeartshapedMusicBox



Series: Stand by you forever - a one shot collection [8]
Category: Karlie Kloss - Fandom, Taylor Swift (Musician)
Genre: F/F, Hospitalization, anxious taylor is interesting to write, kaylor - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 12:45:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14213454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeartshapedMusicBox/pseuds/HeartshapedMusicBox
Summary: Who the fuck cares if you’re Taylor Swift when the sunshine in your life is lying broken somewhere in this hospital? It’s not like you’re the important one here.If only someone could give you an update.





	Say You'll Remember Me

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to BelleOfTheNight who inspired me to write a one shot from Taylor's point of view.

You’ve always secretly been afraid of everybody leaving you. 

It probably started when all of those girls in school refused to be friends with you. You were weird, and they told you so every day. Their rejection filled you with a deep longing for something true, something real, and you found that, or so you thought, until they ended up leaving you behind again. You would retreat into your mother’s caring arms and lick your wounds until you were ready to try again.

But over and over, people just left you.

That was all before, though, before you met Karlie. 

She came into your life on a November night and enveloped your life in warm rays of sunshine all year round. With her calming presence and kind heart, she eased the fear right out of you. With her you were safe; nothing could ever hurt you again.

Or so you thought.

You just hadn’t seen this coming.

\---

The heels of your shoes are clicking hard and fast against the linoleum floor, the sound bouncing off the narrow white walls as you hurry down the hospital corridors. Behind you are two of your security guards and they’re probably the only reason you’re managing to hold yourself together right now, giving you a sense of safety in the midst of all this chaos. 

Shocked eyes stare up at you as you reach the nurses station in the ER. “You’re Taylor Swift.”

You fight the urge to roll your eyes. It would be great if your fame wasn’t so god damn obvious all the time – some moments, like this one, would be better if you weren’t _the_ Taylor Swift. You swallow the annoyance that’s building up inside you and take a deep breath before opening your mouth. “My girlfriend was brought in here, her name’s Karlie. Karlie Kloss.” You purposely refuse to acknowledge the nurse’s stupid observation. Who the fuck cares if you’re Taylor Swift when the sunshine in your life is lying broken somewhere in this hospital? It’s not like you’re the important one here.

You nervously shift your weight from one foot to the other as you wait for the nurse to check her records, your eyes sharp like a hawk. That’s the only reason you notice her expression change from awe to unease seconds before she gulps and meets your gaze again. “I’m really sorry, Miss Swift, but I’m not legally allowed to divulge any of her medical information to you. Is there a family member you can…”

You back away without a word, not hearing the rest of the sentence, bumping into Jeffrey, the security guard you’ve had the longest. He puts a comforting hand on your shoulder, steadying you as you try to think.

You stand there for a good five minutes before you realize you’re just standing in the middle of the hallway. People are already going out of their way to get around you because let’s face it, with two security guards behind you, you’re not exactly leaving a lot of space for people to walk past you. 

Grabbing your phone out of your purse, you quickly send a text to every single one of Karlie's family members in your contacts. “Please,” you write, “I don’t know what to do,” but it feels like you’re screaming into the void.

\---

For hours you pace the empty waiting room, unable to sit still for more than three minutes at a time. When you try to sit down for longer, you can feel thousands of ants crawling around inside your veins, leaving you restless and agitated. If only you could go somewhere, do something, but going somewhere would mean leaving the love of your life behind here, in some kind of limbo, and that thought is worse than the thought of her knowing you’re sitting in the waiting room waiting to see her, but not being allowed in. 

If only someone could give you an update.

It's weird how one moment everything is fine, and the next, nothing is. She came home from a trip to Florida just last night, feeling off. You got her fed and tucked her into bed early, noticing she was maybe a little bit warmer than usual, but she fell asleep quickly and you didn't want to disturb her. When she complained about a headache this morning, you offered to stay home with her, saying you could postpone your meeting and just spend the day with her, but she smiled at you and declined your offer, saying she’d rather just take a painkiller and get on with her busy day. Instead, she collapsed right outside your building.

You make a mental note to send flowers to the neighbor who called you.

Her parents arrive from Hawaii late that night. You're sitting slumped in a chair when they walk in, Tracy coming up to you and hugging you immediately. You’re still anxiously waiting for an update, fearing the worst at this point since no one has come to tell you she’s awake and wants to see you.

“Come on,” she says and takes your hand to make sure you'll follow her, “let’s go see our girl.”

\---

Your beautiful girl is isolated in a room with a tube down her throat. You have to watch her through a window while you put on a paper gown and a face mask. She has meningitis, they say, and they’re not taking any chances – it can spread too quickly and do too much damage. How much damage it’s inflicting on your girl though, they can’t tell you. It’s too early to know.

She looks so much smaller than her usual 6’1” self, lying in that hospital bed hooked up to monitors that beep at steady intervals. You sit calmly by her bed holding her hand, even though you’re silently screaming from the top of your lungs until you’re so tired you almost fall asleep on her. Her mother sends you home promising to call you the moment anything changes and you reluctantly leave her behind, but you’re not allowed to leave the premises until the doctors have given you a shot of antibiotics just in case she has infected you. You live together after all, and you’re still _the_ Taylor Swift, so that’s a potential lawsuit the hospital would rather not have to deal with. 

Your mother is sitting in your hallway waiting for you when you get home, having flown in from Nashville half an hour earlier because you begged her to come. You just can’t do this alone and so you offered your pilots double pay if they would go get her immediately. When you walk through the door she immediately puts her strong arms around you, holding you close. You cry into her chest, just like you used to do as a little girl. “What if she dies on me?” you wail, the uncertainty of Karlie’s situation mixing in with that years-old fear of everyone leaving you. You can’t lose her, not now, not ever. She’s your missing puzzle piece; with her, you feel whole.

Sleep evades you most of the night. You mostly lie awake feeling the emptiness of the other side of the bed, which is heavier now than when she was in Florida two nights ago. Eventually you fall asleep in the early hours of the morning, sleeping miserably until you wake up to check your phone for the 20th time. No news. 

At least that means she’s still alive.

\---

On the third agonizing day without any signs of improvement, your girl finally starts to get better. Her fever is going down and she starts breathing on her own again.

You watch the doctors take the tube out of her throat with tears in your eyes. Your mother is there with you, as is Karlie’s, and together you sit and watch her chest go up and down as she takes breath after breath on her own. Slowly the swarm of butterflies in your stomach comes to life and you start feeling hopeful again. She’s not leaving you; she’s staying and you’re both going to be just fine.

But when she eventually wakes up the next day, seeing her is like a punch to the stomach. Her familiar green eyes look at you with no recognition and you feel like someone has just dumped a bucket of icy water over your head. 

With surprising grace you quietly excuse yourself and leave the room with the shattered remnants of your heart clogging up your throat. Right outside the door you break down, your knees giving out under you as you sink to the floor, tears running down your face. Your mother joins you there, putting a comforting arm around your shoulders and whispering comforting words that you don’t hear. 

You sit there for what seems like an eternity, paralyzed by the all-encompassing loneliness you feel, until her mother convinces you to come back inside. After all, it’s not like Karlie recognized anyone else either.

She sleeps the rest of the day. You sit in a chair with your knees tucked into your chest, staring at her, wondering if she has forgotten you completely. Her doctors are hopeful, saying her memory will slowly but surely return, but you can’t make yourself believe that while she remains a shell of her true self. 

Feeling worn and defeated, you go home to your empty bed.

You bring her a framed picture of the two of you the next day. She stares at it confusedly for a while before she drops it onto her blanket, her hands too weak to hold it up for long. She looks ashamed when she notices the look on your face and whispers “sorry” to you, but you wipe a tear on your sleeve and tell her it’s okay. “Do you mind if I stay for a while?” you ask her, your heart beating faster than it should, and she lets you. You sit in silence for a while, not knowing what to really say, and soon she’s asleep again. 

\---

She gets a little bit better with every day that passes, slowly regaining both her strength and her memories. One day you walk into her room after her afternoon nap to find her sitting in bed holding that photo of the two of you. She looks up at you for a brief second before she looks back to the picture, deep in thought, tracing her fingers over the daisy in her hair. “I wore this in my hair that entire day,” she says, dazed.

Your heart skips a beat as her eyes meet yours again. “You picked it for me.”

Tears well up in your eyes as you nod, sitting down on her bed. “You remember,” you whisper, your fingers carefully brushing over hers. 

“It’s fuzzy,” she admits, “like all the details are taunting me just below the surface and the moment I latch on to something, it disappears again.” 

“It will come back,” you assure her, and it does. Not all at once, not even by the time her hospital stay is over, but one sunny day she brushes by you in the kitchen and whispers into your ear that the fog has cleared. She takes your hand and leads you upstairs. In her arms, your fear eases away once again.

With her you are safe.


End file.
